Playtest at HexCon ’22

Last weekend, I flew to Trondheim to attend HexCon for the first time. HexCon ’22 also marked the last date in the “Loop ‘n’ Loot Demo Tour accross Norway” after Arcon, MidgardCon and RegnCon.

First time in Trondheim, I spent some time with my Guild Ball sparring partner talking about many things including my work-in-progress miniature game, quickly visited Nidaros Cathedral, had 2 pizza diners (Hevd is an awesome place to eat, Grano is completely overrated), visited downtown city and, of course, attended the convention.

The convention itself was pretty nice, although a bit small on the role-playing game side (I counted 3 GMs over the week-end, each of us with several slots). For my game, it’s not a disadvantage: it helps gathering people who have no clue what they have signed for and players who did not get a seat in another game happening at the same time slot as Loop ‘n’ Loot. It also gave me the opportunity to test OG, a caveman RPG with limited use of words. It was fun!

(Once again, I forgot to take any picture of the convention… If you happen to have some, hook me up!)

HexCon was the occasion to have 3 playtests with the latest iteration of the rules, with 10 players who had never tried it before. All in all, it went well and I believe everyone had a good time. A new record was set, with a player suggesting to put something on fire in the first room in the dungeon :p.

The playtests allowed me to validate some design decisions I took during the month of October. The biggest change was the new NPC cards (that you see in the October wrap-up linked article), consequences of many, many, many iterations with one simple goal: make it simple and usable. It is now in a satisfying place.

There is a good chance the name for the GM/Referee changes for “Croupier”, which makes sense given the poker inspiration.

One of the feedback I got from the playtests is the use of Attributes. Your Attributes value = Number of cards you can draw for a test. In combat, I simply say “you use everything you have at hand, therefore you draw the sum of your Attributes”. In a way, that makes sense. In a way it doesn’t (why a character with 0 in Heart would suddenly be able to charm an enemy in combat?). Therefore, my newest task on my to-do is to investigate that specific Attribute/Draw/Combat matter:

  • Is it better to draw the sum of your Attributes in combat (ex: 5 cards) and use these cards for your Action+Reaction?
  • Is it better to draw cards related to the relevant Attribute when you declare an Action or Reaction? Ex: “I attack with my hand weapon! = Draw your Clubs value for this Action”, “I dodge away from the lightning bolt = Draw your Spades value for this Reaction”.

I don’t know yet. But if you have an opinion, you are more than welcome to share it on the Loop ‘n’ Loot community Discord server :).